Commercial real estate's technology stack has spread to include areas that just a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable, at least in this space. New features and functions, not to mention advanced computing, can be found not only in the apartment space – where the consumer-facing applications are most in use – but also in the back end processes that run most CRE operations no matter the sector. Developing these products requires more than just knowledge of, say, machine learning or predictive analytics. At the same time, the men and women who build technology for commercial real estate need to have an in-depth under-standing of the problems the technology needs to solve. They need to be knowledgeable about both subject domains and that mix is not always easy to find. But find those people we did and they are highlighted in the following pages.

INDIVIDUALS

ARIE BARENDRECHT Ten years ago, Arie Barendrecht launched certification company WiredScore to improve connectivity in buildings and help owners and de-velopers ensure reliable internet, Wi-Fi and mobile signals. As CEO, Barendrecht focuses on making the world's buildings smarter and better connected by identifying areas of growth, discussing opportunities for expansion on a geographical level and building awareness of WiredScore's brand. Under his leadership, 800 million square feet of commercial and residential space has been committed to WiredScore, and the company boasts a client base of more than 900 firms across 27 countries — impacting eight million people. Following COVID-19, Barendrecht led the launches of several key offerings, including SmartScore, which identifies commercial assets that meet sustainability standards, and WiredScore Home, a certification for residential properties. He also led the company's expansion into 12 new European markets and he continues to ensure that WiredScore exhibits a strong company culture that prioritizes inclusivity and diversity. He serves on WiredScore's diversity, equity & inclusion committee, through which he has championed several company initiatives such as providing DE&I training for all WiredScore employees, as well as forming a community service relationship with Room To Grow, a New York City-based non-profit organization that supports families raising babies born into low-income circumstances.

MICHAEL CLAWAR As a consultant specializing in consumer demand forecasting early in his career, Michael Clawar learned how markets shift during five-year and 10-year spans. Although he was not operating in the real estate space at the time, he realized that CRE investors were looking for the type of market intelligence that he was providing via small, bespoke models. Forging out on his own, Clawar built StratoDem, which pro-vided a scalable solution for CRE investors that could ingest large amounts of data, normalize it and provide forecasts with regional, local and hyperlocal lenses. The company focused on demand-side drivers, such as population movement and job growth. The missing puzzle piece was the supply side factors such as investment performance data and outcomes and supply pipelines in specific markets. In 2021, Altus Group purchased StratoDem. Today, as VP of data & analytics at Altus Group, Clawar leads data and analytics development and the expansion of the StratoDem platform to bring future data analytics products, including real estate performance forecasting, to market. He runs the data science team with a focus on building models that explain performance, creating forecasts for asset-level and market-level income growth, and working around problems relating to environmental risk — which is becoming a crucial consideration for CRE investors. The pandemic presented an opportunity for Clawar and his team to provide analyses based on mobile phone data to track population losses and gains triggered by the pandemic. He found that mobile phone data can be a good predictor of near-term domestic net migration in gen-eral, and therefore a key alternative source relative to the official estimates that are provided by the US Census Bureau. Clawar is an active participant in Altus Group's mentorship program and he also participates in the company's Altus Cares program.